· April 29, 2018 · 10:00 am
School District Forced to Pay $10,000 in Bitcoin Ransomware Attack
The Leominster Public Schools District has become the latest victim of a . The school district was forced to pay $10,000 in bitcoin to unlock their system.
Details of the Cyberattack
On April 14th, suspected hackers took over the computer system of the Leominster Public Schools District in Massachusetts, shutting it down. According to Paula Deacon, the superintendent of the school district, a lock was placed on the computer system and a ransom was demanded. Meanwhile, the cyber hijackers stipulated that the ransom should be paid in , the popular cryptocurrency.
As part of the negotiations between the school district and the hackers, decryption keys were sent to unlock some of the locked files as a show of proof. Commenting on the issue, Dean Mazzarella, the mayor of Leominster, said that the .” He also said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was tracking the matter. According to the mayor, the $10,000 ransom payment will be taken from the city’s general fund. Mazzarella also added:
They were on top of their game. They are using the best and highest technology. They were just looking for an opening and the system was hacked somehow or another.
Cryptocurrency ransomware on the rise
bitcoin Ransomware is ‘Impossible to Track’
Michael Goldman, the interim Leominster Police Chief, said that the crime is impossible to track. He declared his suspicions that the hackers were from overseas, probably Europe. As a result, there is precious little that the police department can do. Goldman also said that he advised Deacon to pay the ransom.
Goldman also stressed that the ransomware attack did not represent a theft of any data. The school district’s files were locked down, as well as the school’s email system, but no data was actually mined.
The Growing Trend of Cryptocurrency Ransomware Attacks
This attack is the latest in a of cryptocurrency-related cyber-attacks that are becoming more rampant. In January 2018, in Indiana was hit with a ransomware attack. The hospital was worth of bitcoin to the hackers. Perhaps the most popular bitcoin ransomware is the variant. It caused major disruptions across the globe in 2017 by attacking computer systems and demanding bitcoin as ransom. Victims of the attack included the U.K. NHS and tech companies in Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, and Russia.
Having an up-to-date malware protection system can help prevent ransomware attacks. In addition, users are also advised to perform regular backups to sites that are not directly linked to their systems. In the event of a hack, users can restore their systems from the backups rather than paying the ransom. Still, no system is completely invulnerable to attack.
What are your views on cryptocurrency ransomware? Do you think it negatively affects the public perception of cryptocurrencies? Please share your views in the comments below.
Image courtesy of Pixabay and Bitcoinist archives.
Published at Sun, 29 Apr 2018 14:00:58 +0000
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Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency
Tether, a cryptocurrency pegged 1-to-1 to the U.S. dollar, was allegedly hacked today to the tune of $31 million.
Tether functions to convert U.S. dollars to a type of cryptocurrency. The project’s token (USDT) is pegged to the dollar and is used in exchange trading. The idea behind Tether is that instead of having to sell your bitcoin or other token for a fiat currency, you can convert it to USDT, and either hold it in USDT or else transfer your USDT to another exchange and use it to purchase tokens there.
As for the exchanges, USDT allows them to trade in something akin to dollars, without requiring them to have a bank account.
Tether operates on the “Omni Layer Protocol,” which itself operates on top of the bitcoin network, and uses bitcoin addresses. According to a on the project’s website, $31 million worth of USDT was sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address on November 19, 2017.
In the blog post, Tether also noted it released a new version of the Omni Core software used by exchanges and wallets to support USDT transactions, thus implementing a temporary hard fork to the Omni Layer. As a result, the affected tokens are frozen in place, making them essentially worthless to the hacker.
“We strongly urge all Tether integrators to install this software immediately to prevent the coins from entering the ecosystem,” Tether wrote, adding that “any tokens from the attacker’s addresses will not be redeemed.”
Some exchanges, , have stopped trading USDT temporarily while they upgrade to the newer software.
The heist was made in out of Tether’s core in the amounts of 23,000,000; 7,900,000; and 500,000 USDT. It is unclear why the hacker did not move all of the money out at once.
In addition to the other exchanges it trades on, USDT is widely traded on Bitfinex, an exchange that lost 119,756 BTC (worth $72 million at the time) in a hack that took place a year and a half ago.
News of the Tether attack comes at a time when some — notably the blogger “” — are questioning whether USDTs are being issued without backing of actual U.S. dollars. Similarly, there has been growing that Tether is being used in possible market manipulation to drive up the price of bitcoin.
The current market cap value of USDT is around . If that money is backed by real reserves, as , the project would need to have at least that much in its bank account in Taiwan.
Tether publishes a bank account balance on its website’s and claims the money is redeemable for U.S. dollars at any time directly through the .
The project’s website has been up and down sporadically, since the hack. An archive of the site is available .
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